Three Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air attack on a house in the Tulkarem refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Ministry of Health says.
Reporting from Tulkarem, Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim said on Thursday that the raid was ongoing 12 hours later in the congested area, with sounds of explosives and gunfire heard and drones flying above.
“People inside the refugee camp say the Israeli army has set fire to some of the homes and that civil defence teams are not being allowed in to put out the fires,” she said.
The aerial attack on Thursday came as the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said fighters from its Tulkarem Battalion clashed with Israeli soldiers in the camp and detonated explosive devices targeting military vehicles.
“Our fighters continue to clash with the occupation forces and we have achieved direct hits among them,” the Qassam Brigades said.
The Israeli military deployed snipers on roofs and sent in bulldozers to destroy infrastructure.
The Quds News Network posted a video of a fire following the army’s ground assault on the camp.
The Israeli military said its aircraft struck “several militants” in Tulkarem as ground forces searched for buried explosives.
Dozens of buildings were destroyed in the operation and at least one Israeli soldier was wounded.
Tulkarem has been hit hard by Israeli raids, with 90 homes in the area destroyed by the Israeli army’s operations since Israel’s war on Gaza started in October, Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim said.
Israeli forces also conducted raids in cities and towns across the West Bank, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported, and arrested two teenagers in the town of Deir Ballut and Tubas city.
A total of 25 Palestinians, including two women and a child, were arrested overnight and through Thursday morning across the West Bank, according to Wafa.
The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said in a joint statement that the Israeli raids were marked by violence and intimidation.
Witnesses told PPS that detainees and their families there threatened and their homes were damaged.
In the village of Burqa, east of Ramallah, Israeli troops clashed with Palestinians and deployed tear gas, live rounds and sound bombs.
Attacks in the West Bank have surged since October 7, with Israeli forces killing more than 600 Palestinians in the occupied territory, including 144 children, while more than 10,000 Palestinians have been arrested.
In a landmark but nonbinding ruling, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last month declared Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as unlawful, saying it should come to an end “as rapidly as possible”.
Meanwhile, Israeli police arrested four Israeli settlers accused of taking part in a deadly rampage in the West Bank village of Jit last week, which drew international condemnation.
The four suspects were being investigated for “terrorism against Palestinians”, according to a statement from police and the Shin Bet security service reported by the Reuters news agency.
